Page 68 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

FEMININITY AND AUTHORITY 55
solely. However, they do provide gender-focused pages, advertising and links.
Interestingly, none of the interviewees mentioned sites designed for Asian and Chinese
female audiences.

Women’s websites
The extent to which websites are effective in facilitating networking amongst women and
in bridging gender inequality for women in business are important questions. Internet
sites tailored to women can play a doubly influential role. First, they can encourage
Chinese women to use the Internet and join the ranks of Internet users worldwide, and
potentially transform what is perceived as a particularly male space (and this is reflected in
the low figures of women using the Internet in China) into a more welcoming
environment for women. And second, they can create a forum for Chinese women and
businesswomen within which they can achieve a sense of identity and community.
Below I provide an analysis of Internet sites that catered for the professional and
business woman in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

www.WomenAsia.com

www.WomenAsia.com was launched in Singapore in 1996 and was designed for
professional women throughout Asia and North America. It provided profiles of
successful women used as motivational and inspirational role models. Additionally it
offered a directory listing its members’ businesses. Through this directory, women could
access names of contacts by searching by industry and/or country. The women using this
site were encouraged to support each other and foster relationships. Stories of successful
women in business were also provided. 7

www.gaogenxie.com
A more recently developed site is the Chinese language www.gaogenxie.com. The site
was launched in mid-April 2000, and the name translates as ‘high-heeled shoes’. At the
time of writing, however, this site was inaccessible and possibly closed down. When the
site was running, the home page featured eye-catching coloured flowers in the top
banner. Down the left-hand side of the page were different types of shoes (sandals through
to stilettos), marking the various links women could follow, such as health, beauty and
even single life. A secondary and less prominent list of links was offered below and these
included more specific topics such as make-up, weight loss, music, movies and marriage.
Tara Wang Lucas, educated in Beijing, the United States and France, is one of the site’s chief
creators. She declared that the website is in ‘sharp contrast to the historical images of
Chinese women with bound feet isolated in a courtyard’. She also claimed that gaogenxie
‘represents the rapidly changing face of today’s hip, young and educated Chinese woman’
(Mooney 2000). The site sets out to address issues concerning women that the state media
is reluctant to tackle, including the open discussion of sex, via various channels and chat
forums. To highlight the site creators’ radical agenda, and coinciding with the release of a